Today, after a few days of hearing the overly-repeated news of bin Laden's death, I read the following in A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn:

I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.

Indeed, plenty of stories confirm this basic fact of war: among the dead, most are civilians, and among those, most are children. Here is an excerpt from an article written in 2001 regarding the war in Afghanistan:

The reporters saw clear evidence that many civilians had been killed in the attack, though they could not confirm the number of deaths. 'I ask America not to kill us,' pleaded Hussain Khan, who said he had lost four children in the raid.

Wars affect children more than any other type of person. I urge you: do what you can to stop war. Sign petitions. Vote for pacifists. Love your neighbor. "Be the change you want to see in the world."